OPINION | FORMULA 1: Hold Your Horses, All 1,000 of Them
Melbourne Weather Conditions Shouldn’t Determine Season
Sports Reporter Collective
April 8, 2025
By Macey Wyler | Contributor
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.– Lights out and away we go with the 2025 Formula 1 season! The season officially kicked off last weekend with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, Australia.
After pre-season testing, it was clear who the frontrunners might be this season, and McLaren proved they’re in it to win it with a stellar drive and finish from point driver, Lando Norris in Australia. But with only one race down, how much should Melbourne be used to predict the remainder of the season?
Throughout the two and a half hours of the race, drivers experienced all four seasons, rain, wind and sun. Before the race started, the track was slick, and most drivers started on inter tires that are designed to be used when it is too wet for slick tires and too dry for rain tires. Throughout the formation lap, drivers used their radios to tell their engineers the paint lines on the track were very slick. Conditions left it almost impossible to tell how the teams and cars will fair throughout the rest of the season.
There is no question the conditions made for a brutal race, and with three Safety Car periods, there were six drivers that did not finish the race. Rookies Isack Hadjar, Jack Doohan, Liam Lawson and Gabriel Bortoleto faced a myriad of crashes resulting in their DNFs. Two more experienced drivers, Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz also found themselves in the wall from the slippery surfaces on track.
McLaren came out hot with a front grid lock out to start the race. With good starts, it looked like the race could be Norris, McLaren’s Piastri or Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Early car and tire troubles left Verstappen tens of seconds behind the McLarens, and it looked like it was Norris’ race to lose. On and off rain left teams like Ferrari and Mercedes struggling with their strategy on the track and in the pit lane.
McLaren’s Piastri had an unfortunate stumble in the last ten laps of the race when he found himself stuck in a grassy area. An impressive recovery left him finishing in ninth place between the two Ferrari’s, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. The Mercedes finished third and fourth with their rookie Kimi Antonelli scoring major points for the team in his Formula 1 seat debut. Surprising results from Alex Albon gave Williams a good number of points even though Sainz suffered an early race crash. Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll finished in sixth, just ahead of Kick Saber’s Nico Hulkenburg.
The Melbourne top ten was shaped by conditions and crashes relatively rare to the F1 calendar. Last season, five of 24 races had some rain, with only a handful of race Sundays effected by it. With the 2025 season starting with such challenging conditions, it’s hard to say how much Sunday’s outcome should play into the rest of the season predictions.
As a McLaren fan, I was encouraged by the power the car had throughout the weekend, and Norris’ strong finish for his fifth career win was definitely encouraging. At the end of the day, the Melbourne Grand Prix gave some powerful insights to how teams handle rain, but the results shouldn’t be taken too seriously yet. Let’s give it a few more race weekends before jumping to conclusions about this season’s frontrunners.
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REPORTER’S BIO | Macey Wyler is a junior studying political science and journalism in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Arkansas.
Note: Featured photo courtesy of James Watson on Unsplash.